


Of building up and letting go

by DeyaniraSan



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Discontinuous Timeline, Enemies to Friends, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers if you squint?, Hank is a millenial, Hank is depressive, I ship them but considering canon how much romance can you have in a revolution really, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reincarnation, Sarcasm, Slow Burn, Soul Bond, Soul Learning AU, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-04 02:36:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21190160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeyaniraSan/pseuds/DeyaniraSan
Summary: Humans always reincarnate, forever searching, living, loving and learning. That is the wandering nature of the human soul. Not everyone remembers their past endeavours, and those who do only are able to do it at the price of the past overlapping with the present until they lose themselves. Hank Anderson is one of the few that remembers.In this world where CyberLife brought to the commercial life the idea of a perfected soul, androids are just machines without souls overly specialised and finely tuned in their abilities. Their purpose is to use their exemplary skillsets to help advance humanity, even as they are never-changing and unable to learn beyond their programming. So why does Connor feel so unsettled in his journey to achieve his purpose?





	1. A fraudulent reproduction

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I am about one year too late to join this party but considering the PC re-release I am here and queer to jump back on the bandwagon of this fandom and bring you this gem of a fic. Jk, I know it's a mess. I designed this AU so please bear with me, I will explain stuff slowly. I will try to update once a week, and hey maybe some of you will see some of the Easter Eggs I placed in this chapter, and mostly I hope you will enjoy! Please comment any of your thoughts, it's been a while since my last fic so sorry for any mistakes. I just love Connor.

It had rained for the first time they met, the smell still permeating the air crisp and clear, evocative of the worn down memory that had never happened before. Connor’s coin flipped like a sharp flash in the night air, its silver cold and impersonal barely seen in the dark surroundings before quickly hiding back in the palm of the hand that had flipped it in the first place. The gesture was inane, and frankly pointless, but if asked Connor would’ve motivated its necessity as a simple calibration of its sensors, all his processes slowing down and focusing on the simple mechanics of moving his fingers just right to catch the coin, almost pleasant in its simplicity. Yet, it felt like something more, and something less unimportant overall to all his other programmed functions, to the point of almost shaping the impossible idea of it not even being programmed in his systems in the first place. But that was absurd to the point of lunacy; after all the first theoretical concepts of androids was their fully and completely obsolete inability to learn. After all, they had been modelled to be perfect, representations of what a fragile human soul could never achieve.

The line of processing through his systems was jarring and somewhat odd to the point it snapped Connor of the somewhat slowdown of his processors that was subsequent to his calibration trick back to glaring clarity. Back to his mission. He blinked – unnecessarily – and decidedly put the coin away before arranging his slightly dislodged tie. The door of Jimmy's bar offered little encouragement about how his search was about to proceed and automatically, almost mechanically, just somewhat slower than his full capacity would normally be able to sustain he stepped further in.

* * *

_ When it was firstly introduced the concept of androids was laughable not due to the highly technological advances required to leap forwards dozens of steps to support such a platform as an AI, nevermind a completely functional artificial intelligence fully integrated in a synthetic body, but simply due to what its inventor, proclaimed it to be inspired by: human souls. _

_ The theory of soul learning (also known as soul transfer, soul addition, soul reincarnation as some of its most popular terminology to date) has been scarcely documented in some theological texts and, controversially, is said to appear as a concept in most religions, some theologians linking it to the summative addition of different Christian and Buddhist myths and dogmas.  _

_ This is evident from the central idea defining the theological current, that being that “the soul is an addition of previous lives' experiences, thoughts and feelings"' Some variations of the definition include radical concepts such as the human ability to learn new skills being transferable from one “life to another", and that the intrinsic human ability to learn and create is inherently linked to the enrichment of the soul's energy to be passed into a future life.  _

_ Most people are not aware of these previous skills, these inbetween-lives transferable skills in fact showing up as a particular inclination in most humans towards preferred activities. Cases of 'awakened people have been linked to chronic mental health conditions and have been highly disreputable. Nevertheless, the idea had gained momentum in the past 60 years or so with the rapid evolution and discoveries in quantum physics, with Polish researcher Eugeniusz Kamyszak showing proof of the presence of a so called aura field that is related and correlated with the presence of a human soul.  _

_ The Android-dilemma as it came to be known, first appeared in academic circles in 2020 with Elijah Kamski's controversial paper saying how the previous iteration trying to achieve an AI algorithm have failed due to “pouring research into wrong facsimile models inspired by current programming languages". This he explained, could only be remedied by “taking example of the already perfected algorithm that is representative of humanity", and that a functional Android could only represent “the better unachievable ideal that the human souls tries and perverts in its attempt to achieve". In other words, and android could only be achieved by creating the perfect copy that the human souls tries to achieve through iterative reincarnation, combining in what some critics have called “a blasphemous amalgamation of theism and science".  _

_ Even if still controversial, the CyberLife androids are said to be still manufactured at their core based on Kamski's initial quasi-religious idea, as being perfected human beings, although this marketing strategy has been abandoned after Kamski's surprising retirement. In many recent interviews Kamski explains how according to the soul learning theory humans reincarnated with the point of achieving personal perfection – somewhat echoing of some of the Renaissance ideology – that humanity's goal and pitfall is an absolute search for perfection, and only upon achieving it, then and only then would happiness and immortality be achievable. As this is not possible, the soul is stuck and iterative reincarnations trying and failing to achieve these impossible standards. Kamski took this concept and decided to achieve it - by simply creating a new form of intelligence and lifeform that “although soulless, would never require any reincarnation as they have been born knowing everything. Thus, even as they are not able to learn and adapt in human ways, they have already surpassed our existential purpose.” Public's unfavourable is somewhat biased to these claims, many still expressing a distaste for androids to humanitarian, anthropological and philosophical reasons.  _

_ Tech Addict, No. 6, Vol 48, Summer 2032 _

* * *

Connor could immediately tell the place was not a favourable environment for any android even without a state of the art analysing software that could perceive and compute information faster than the newest prototype they were still developing for the reconnaissance probe due to send in the following 5 years for the exploration of the closest exoskeleton planet. That was also by exclusion of the very obvious and completely visible signs on the entrance door as well as the rude scratching into the wooden corners of the derelict bar, most inane comments about what androids are - useless arrogant machines - and some less obvious ones about where androids should go - an unclear metaphor with the obvious message that androids should disappear. 

The first thing he actually noticed was the lack of light, his cybernetic pupils adjusting immediately to the lack of illumination with some of his alternative night settings protocols activating partially to let him see just enough. It gave him a quick glimpse of the scowling faces hiding in booths cast in intermittent penumbras, depending on the willingness of a flickering lightbulb to cooperate with its designated function. Even so, the place was cast in a blueish, uneasy light making him fight against the irrational urge to squint as to filter out some of the its uncomfortable intensity. 

The second thing was the smell, his sensory identifying almost instantly that the strongest aromas permeating the bar were alcohol, human sweat and stale smoke from either cigarettes or weed depending on the personal preferences of the patron. Besides the analytical analysis, Connor's database immediately supplied that the best way to describe such a combination would be pungent, unpleasant and uncomfortable and for a moment he contemplated turning the function off as no modular description could've prepared him to the actual experience of smelling this potent conversation. 

The third thing, and the most alarming of them all was the amount of patrons that have stopped to stare at him as the door jingled closed behind him in a singular woeful creak, his gross scan signalling out their body language as a varied combination of aggressive, defensive and fearful. Overall, Connor did not feel positive about his initial encounter with this particular bar - not that the others had been particularly pleasant - to the point that he felt a slight whirring in his processors as he manually impulses them into activating the automatic locomotion programme out of something akin to surprise. Thankfully the slight error had not been more than 0.3 seconds slower than his usual mechanics, and therefore completely invisible to a human observer, making feel Connor assured that his mannerism spoke of someone displaying confidence. Not that he wasn't his mind supplied unnecessarily so therefore Connor shut off the thought before it could evolve further not dwelling on what it might mean.

As he walked in his eyes quickly scanned every person he encountered trying to ignore the exact emotion their features were displaying as they looked towards him - there was a significant bimodal preference towards either hateful or disgusted, not that it mattered to him. His processors were quickly sorting through names, DOB, criminal records and jobs, and he felt just a slight processing glitch that almost made him frown due to an internal unconscious push towards increasing the speed and efficiency of his scan. He deleted the line of thought that made him remember the calibration coin was hidden in his pocket as it was not essential to the current mission objective. 

His social programming moved his synthetic muscles into a smile to express his willingness for cooperation towards the human bartender of American African origin eyeing him from behind the bar. Unlike his prediction, the gesture did not put Jimmy Peterson at ease, instead furthering his frown into something it took him to recognise as plain distaste before he turned and served another patron that he had scanned 5 seconds ago and was not Hank Anderson. The other man simply consumed his drink in one go - very unhealthy considering his level of inebriation - and muttered something that Connor's language programme did not understand: 'Why don't you just yeet him out?' to which Jimmy simply shook his head sagely whilst whipping a glass absently, although he looked as if he was considering it. Assuming his time in the bar without someone escalating the situation into a less than ideal outcome to his search he once more felt that glitch caused by the impulse for his processors to scan faster to achieve his objective. 

Luckily it didn't take him long to localise his target. Connor felt a his processors highlight the advantageous ways in which the elusive detective had played upon the faults of his scanning software to blend in with the crowd until the last second, and decided to add a function later to make sure something similar would not surprise him like this in the future. Hank Anderson was slightly bent over his glass - possibly his 6th? - his longer hair concealing his face in a natural way, a natural and inconspicuous position that would not attract attention. Connor calculated that from his angle he should've been able to see him since he entered and ignored a slight illogical whirring in his processors as they sped at the realisation. Nevertheless, he had a mission, and searching through his database he selected a social approach that was open, friendly but slightly demure, yet professional and determined as to not create irritation into the man that was obviously expressing a wish not to be approached through his body language, but with whom he needed to create a professional rapport with.

"Lieutenant Anderson, my name is Connor. I am the android sent by CyberLife."


	2. A memoir of past pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently it is possible for me to do weekly updates???? Everyone was surprised by that. This is a new chapter. with more lore and world building than the previous one. More flasbacky about Hank's past we will get back to Connor after this. Somewhat of a heavy chapter TWs included bellow. Sorry for any mistakes we don't beta like sleep deprived cowards, and please do leave a comment if you enjoyed it will certainly motivate me more. I will try for another weekly update, thanks everyone for the support! Lots of easter eggs for this AU idea if you care to find them, so please enjoy.
> 
> Tw: Depression, alcoholism, Cole's death and survivor's guilt, suicidal ideation, low self esteem.

Hank was having a shit night. 

No, back the fuck up. Hank had been having a shit decade that might as well set itself on fire as to fully resemble the dumpster fire his life was trying to emulate. 

He was doing his usual thing: hiding away the fuck away from the world, familiar and yet dissonant background noises that were Jimmy’s bar surrounding him like an unwelcome, yet somewhat comforting in its familiarity blanket. His thoughts were scattered, floating on a wispy fog of alcohol somewhere out of his grasp before they had even started to form, a ghostly touch of an idea passing him by like a cold stranger on the street before it could even begin to become poignant; just perfect enough before to muffle and blend all their sharp pieces, before darker demons would later be awakened dancing on the wakes of a one too many sour burns of alcohol down his throat. But for now he was relishing the watching his life behind a glass screen, his shitty phone lost somewhere he did not even care to consider. 

Oh, and watching the latest damned baseball game, no matter how mind curdling the gameplay, somewhere too far to actually let the total incompetence of the players rile up any other feeling inside him besides a bleak apathy.

He was not having a good night, but it was not a particularly great one, the somewhat awfullness of it blending perfectly with the outlook of his life in the past few years.

Nevertheless, his night was not made particularly better in any case by the appearance of the tucking android. In fact, it turned downright shitty enough to break a top 5 record better than any fucking attempt at a home run he had tried to spot on the screen. The screen muffling over the white noise of his emotions breaking so suddenly into a painful awareness of a stomach curdling anger, burning hatefully through him enhanced by the sludging alcohol through his veins. And as he gazed into soulful doe-like eyes, expressive and yet so inscrutable like a pool of darkened waters, he felt a tinge of apprehension through his anger, a primal part of him trying to recoil at what his brain perceived with crystal clear clarity as completely and utterly alien. 

Hank was drunk, and angry - always so angry - ghosts of his past coming to rip into him like merciless revenants, and his muddled thoughts were unnecessarily trying to read into an enigmatic, encoded book searching for something that he knew was not there. For all of Kamski’s great words of androids representing the perfect image of a soul, they were some of the most soulless husks burdened with existence, ironic in a paradox that he was not drunk enough to think what it meant or did not for humanity.

What he did know was that they had failed him - and,  _ oh _ , what he did  _ not _ know of failure - the spitting image of so called perfection unable to save one person in the end. Humanity and technology had both failed to save his son, and a part of him could only feel disgust at himself and these machines for ever having thought they could do something different.

In the end, Hank always lost his son anyway. And no preprogrammed offering of a ‘drink to go’ could erase the sharp edge of that painful disappointed, even as he bitterly accepted the stupid offering. It was a pathetic attempt that a double shot of whiskey could burn brighter than his feelings, but he still downed it before unwillingly leaving the bar.

Hank was having a very shit night.

* * *

_ Is your soul mate just waiting for you around the corner? _

_ With the constantly dropping rates in marriage licences every year, and the staggering statistics showing that one of the biggest facilitators towards the growing rates of depression is, in fact, the dropping rates of proper communications and relations between people, how could anyone even have hopes for getting into a relationship? When asked, our readers have disclosed that many fear loneliness, and are afraid of remaining single and are struggling to form proper bonds and relationship. A fault of the current society, yet the issue nonetheless pressing. _

_ For all our worried readers, you’re in luck. Not only we want to assure you that you will actually not remain forever alone, but we want to bring you this new idea forward: what if your soul mate was just around the corner? _

_ Now, most of you are incredulously staring at the page. Is one of the top 5 magazines of the year actually talking about soul mates? Before you start dismissing us as neohippies, give us just 2 minutes to discuss this novel idea that had gained popularity to the one and only, Elijah Kamski, the inventor of the year who for the first time in history had created an AI interface that broke the Turing test. What does a new upcoming IT star have to do with this? Kamski explained in his latest interview that his initial inspiration behind the groundbreaking achievement was inspired by his even younger years when getting familiar with previous century’s scientist and philosopher Kamyszak theory about the continuous soul learning ability of the human soul. Well, that is a wild stretch to even write about, but basically not only Kamski subscribes to the idea of a human soul existing in the first place, but he affirms that the soul gets translate - or as we say, reincarnated - in an attempt to better itself. Quite wild, right?  _

_ Well, initially this idea is to be dismissed as completely crazy, but many accounts in the past few decades - possibly due to the apparition of the internet - also concur this idea. Which doesn't make sense right? Well, some people claim to be able to remember bits and pieces about their previous lives, consciously or not, an idea that the neohippie movement that has developed in the last couple of years is most well known and criticised for. They simply say that skills or traits can have an impact on your soul and be passed over, and bring forth the idea that some ‘newer souls’ can attract the same type of people and energy for their first few reincarnations until they ‘mature’ enough and develop a particular skill or experience enough to jump to their next focus.  _

_ This explanation supposedly explains why some people seem to already have been born as gifted in all kinds of areas and fields their parents haven’t, or how they seem to have an inane grasp of life and a deep intelligence that others are simply struggling to achieve. Besides this movement celebrating individually - and hey, you should feel special about your own talents and knowledge anyway - they also affirm souls can get attached to other souls, and therefore, in layman's terms, you can simply get to meet your closed ones in another life. This is just as heartwarming as your next Christian mass, but besides the classical explanation, this means you get to experience everything anew with your favourite people again and again. How cool is that?  _

_ Platonic or not, have you not ever found someone you just click with, that you feel immediately at home and comfortable? Well then, controversial or not, this literally just means your soul mate could be just around the corner! Neohippy or not, one of the smartest men on the planet seems to at least partially believe in it. So, get out of the house, meet some new people, and, hey, the chances are in fact that you might simply slide in and sooth all your missing pieces with the next person you meet. What a way to put off the holiday blues! _

_ Gossips Weekly, No. 11, Vol. 90, Autumn 2022 _

* * *

Hank was the first to admit that after some nebulous point in time he simply just lost most touch with pop culture. It sucked being old, but after college, which fucking Christ he finished around 2006, around the same time dinosaurs fucking disappeared and TVs got put on a diet, he simply could not give a fuck to Google new shit. Therefore, he simply accepted everything as straight out fact, and when in his 30s when the internet collectively decided that Despacito was a mourning song, well, Obama hadn't been president for a while, so was he to argue with powers bigger than himself.

What Hank had never thought to completely agree on was this new? New age bullshit people suddenly started sprouting about souls and shit, to the point he started questioning what people were smoking that they all suddenly turned more Christian than his childhood Mormon next door neighbours that his Ma asked to babysit him once in a while. He wasn't proud, but the first time a one night stand back in college asked him a cheesy line about whether he thought they had met before in a previous life he had laughed before the hangover nausea had pushed him into the toilet to get acquainted with the contents of his guts.

The whole ‘soul learning’ learning theory of reincarnation started from some obscure internet lore to actually being discussed in open society, and Hank was beyond happy to admit he was deeply uncomfortable with that. 

It was not clear, not at first at least and he didn't know there was going to be a moment of clear understanding despite his reluctance. But, nonetheless, there was a feeling, transient and impermeable, unreacheable in its intangibility every time the subject was brought up into a conversation. Something deep and primal unsettle inside him made him unwilling to participate, answer back when others invested themselves in the topic, speculating and wondering with somewhat akin to hopeful eagerness. All Hank ever got out of those conversations was something akin to embarrassment - that slowly developed into a repulsed uncomfortableness - something that made him want to shut it down, grumble rudely before leaving the conversation. 

Hank was good at repressing so he absolutely was in agreement with the false idea that this line of conversation made no sense whatsoever for him, that he could not relate or understand the fascination with a concept he mostly found unsettling and creepy. So what if he had thoughts and idea, gut inklings and feelings about stuff - everyone did after all. He heard open minded people describe about skills or ideas or even memories past down through what could only be described as reincarnation. It did not make sense in a way he found fully unsettling in a fully invasive sort of way although most people seemed so eager to unlock their pasts. Hank did not see the point, the sense of leaving a life concentrating on events so far out of their reach it could not do any good to influence or change the present. A past life was simply an unwanted burden of leaden bound memories trying to drag forth a nonsensical absolution to a highly volatile present. Or some shit anyway, No point of worrying over it when there were simply no reasons to try to remember when there so much to do.

So Hank ignored the slight deja vus most people seemed to get, an entwined melancholy with a sense of yearning when it came to things and places that had no need to be there. Ignored the way some images seemed to overlap in ways that seemed like they were simply infinite reflections of a broken mirror, a propagation out of time and space, moments so idly perfect that they stopped being moments altogether. He ignored the familiarity with which he learnt French that one semester in college, the words tumbling out of his mouth with some degree of familiarity as he learnt them. Ignored the way he was just how his eyes were used to observing people in a predefined pattern, picking a scene up and breaking it down with an unconscious ease that he had never been taught. He ignored the easiness with which he handled knives, and later guns, and how easily and naturally his body slid into fighting stances, some deep sense of familiarity permeating through his movements in a way that could only bring him comfort. It was all part of being human, the feelings, the unconscious drive to find meaning in the mundane, but it did not mean anything more than what it was at face value, observation and depression and just a tad too much hopeful wonder behind it all, nothing more, nothing less. And because of his unpopular views he walked just one too many times out of gathering, well, he had not ever been exactly patient or overly social. 

So Hank simply tried to live his life. He had a bit of missing serotonin but just enough idealism to still finish college with decent marks in Criminology and make his Ma proud. He decided books and archaic systems of knowledge were both terrifying and useless, so he ditched macadamia to go and work on the police task force directly, considering the best way to be useful was using his skills practically, and if he got a free way to punch assholes even the better. Then he made his Ma much less proud when he accidentally knocked up his usual fuck buddy - ironically he he almost felt it was bound to happen considering the amount of stupid encounters between the two of them could create a pool of stupid to baptise their unplanned child in. Nevertheless, he never regretted Cole; if all the stupid choices he seemed attuned to take he never regretted Cole, not even his mother cold feet at actually raising a human child and ditched to go soul searching herself through Florida. Not that he ever looked to uncover what happened to that particular can of worms, no hard feelings between them as he understood the tight claustrophobia boiling under the skin that came with being caged to a situation. Probably if he paid too much many to a psychologist he would've gotten a fancy ribbon to put around the idea as the basis for his discontent with the rising popularity of the soul searching theory, or whatever the media decided to settle on after Kamski brought too much attention to it with his inventions. 

Hank lived a simple, somewhat gory life. Frustrating but mundane in most ways, and perhaps satisfaction deriving from the simplicity of the daily routine, of the somewhat shaky stability he managed to create in a fucked economy in an even more unbalanced and fucked up society.

And then Cole died.

And then Cole died, and it created a chasm so big no amount of substances could heal, no words or advice could soothe the tempest of his emotions. Grief was not the right word to describe the severed limb on his soul, an amputation so cold and clinical that it left him bereft in some of the most fragile and intimate ways a human being could be hurt. He expected the anguish, the tendrils of emotions so intense they felt like jagged tendrils of a fractured mirror further cutting in and crumbling as the damage extending, shards creaking together in a dissonant melody as they rubbed just wrongly under his skin in an attempt to stay together in a badly put image of what had ever only briefly existed. 

What he never expected was the flashes. 

Initially, the first time it happened he was sitting on the floor in Cole’s room, just a few weeks after the accident - after the funeral, although he was unable even to think the word, to think of the small wooden casket in the ground containing in its blackness void and moisture the small, decomposing remains of his -  _ Hank simply did not think of the funeral _ . He was simply trying to pack some of his son’s clothes, although his attempts had simply resumed to him sitting on the floor holding a shirt with a soccer ball on a blue background, staring numbly at the fabric in an almost pathetic confusion, as if he didn't know what to do with it. He was by now numb, and anything that wasn't numb could be made numb by his ever present whiskey bottle which he simply dragged around the house like a lifeline. Jeffrey had given him a month off to ‘sort his Arthur’s as he uncomfortably but non unsympathetically put it, so Hank had nothing to do but stare at walls and get drunk, memories unwillingly reaching through his mind with numb fingers to drag painfully the emotions into their merciless grasp. 

Whatever resistance to alcohol he had built in college had been blown to smittens in the first week after he got released from the hospital with only a box containing only the mismatched and blood stained clothing of his son, and now he simply had reached a steady state of drunkenness that barely left him an acceptable rate of dissociating, just enough to barely keep the pain away behind a leaky dam. But trying to pack Cole’s clothes, the blue shirt something he had worn just a few days  _ before _ \- his life now divide in a simple yet bolded line of before and after - brought up just enough overflowing tumultuous emotion to obliterate the dam, his eyes filling up with all the strength that left his hands unsure and shaky. 

And then the image of the present changed, a bad moment of grainy clarity, his mind bringing forth an image of a broken camera, static and interferences corrupting it, changing it to something barely understandable as if the image had unwillingly slithered out from a dark tunnel, of some unknown yet unfamiliar clothes gripped into some unfamiliar yet personally intimate hands. It barely lasted for a second but it was enough, the image of a frilly white shirt ingrained into Hank’s retina uncomfortably and mercilessly, almost mockingly to the point he had to blink to see Cole’s blue shirt crumpled on the floor after having slipped from his fingers. What hurt most of all was the new wave of pain - intolerable, sharp, excruciating pain - so sudden and so familiar, as if he was relieving the first moments of that detestable first week after the accident, so strong and raw that a sob escaped Hank, uncontrollable and painful, dredging out from his throat before he muffled the rest of it with the stinging burn of whiskey from the bottle, immediately chugging the remaining contents of alcohol at his side. 

At first he had thought it had been a passing illusion brought up by drinking and unbearable pain. Grieving and yada, yada. But it repeated itself, again and again, the images more clear and yet more convoluted each time that for some time Hank was torn between his grief and a haze of alcohol trying to come to terms with the notion he was going completely and utterly crazy. There was no explanation for suddenly seeing things - different and unsettling things, that somewhat felt so personal and vivid that he could not play as drunken imagery due to his imbibing of his brain in mostly ethanol for all his waking hours. 

It was Chris that brought forth the unsettling idea at first that these could be, in fact, memories.

It had been a few weeks already, a haze of displaced time and moments blending in and out of each other in their miserable similarity. The only constant Hank seemed to care for was Sumo, but even the dog seemed less chipper than usual, sad and sulking, unwilling to even go out at times in the backyard. Throughout his drunken mind, Hank mustered just enough worry to have the dog taken to the vet, the fear of losing one more important person to him so unbearable that he had spent the night after making the decision awake and drinking, listening to the dogs huffing breaths as if each one would be the last. The joy of hearing his dog was just as depressed as he lasted just for a few hours after coming home, the amused irony coursing derisively through his veins until it got numbed off again with alcohol.

The same courtesy had not been extended towards his phone or emails, the voicemails piling up in his mobile notification bar, unwanted reminders he swiped away vindictively as soon as they showed up. In hindsight it was no surprise that sooner or later someone would come to his house simply to check if his body needed to be reported in, the thought particularly hilarious in a dark and twisted, yet painful way as the click of the gun resonated dully against his ear to signal its emptiness. 

When Hank managed to gather himself from the lying pile of hangover migraine and couch sleeping achy body enough to go answer the door he supposed he should've expected someone - perhaps Jeffrey - to send Chris over. Hank liked Chris - he was a good man, and an even better officer, admirable in his compassionate and dedicated nature that made him particularly good at handling difficult cases. Perhaps that was why it was particularly more unbearable to face the other man, his kind face and warm eyes immediately taking in the pitiful state Hank was in with complete acceptance. And Hank felt shitty - beyond shitty really, because Chris was a good man, so of course he was going to be sympathetic if not fully empathetic to his situation, but he only felt embarrassment at seeing the other, keenly aware of his unkempt appearance and smelly clothes the air in the house behind his half closed door permeating some of the misery and messiness that had surrounded him through the blurry dazed that had simply stretched one into another into an infinite loop displaced from reality and life. He was keenly ashamed, and more than anything the kindness the other man casually tried to impress despite his nerves - by offering him a casserole Hank was aware he was mostly going to waste away in his fridge, forgotten to rot - was simply rubbing him the wrong way, the rawness of his wound so tender and so deeply personal it felt like an insult to be even gazed upon by someone else, something animalistic in his body curling defensively with an irrational need to protect and hide.

But because Chris was good, and they had been somewhat close to friends before, Hank opened the door and let him in, his wife’s casserole awkwardly held between his hands watching as the other man was greeted by a moppy Sumo with a pitiful whine as he dragged his body to the door to greet the newcomer that was too old and different from the person he would never see again. Hank still bit his cheek to the point he felt blood, closed the door and tried to make halting small talk for the next half an hour, as pitifully Chris helped him clean away some of the grossest take out boxes, accompanied with nonsensical chatter about the life at the precinct that felt so alien now, almost similar to the flashes that kept haunting his days like flashes of a static and disturbing channel overlapping in his mind so vividly he lost sense of his present. The reminder of the flashes set Hank even more on edge, to the point he stopped even pretending to answer Chris’ good natured chatter. The other tried - and, fuck if Hank didn't feel like an asshole, the feelings so dizzying that the words to even expressed them got erased, the hatred and pain he felt burning under his skin making him itch just in the wrong way, claustrophobic with no way to run, unable to express his thoughts. Chris had valiantly preserved, yet he slowly got to that stalling point in the conversation precursor to a hasty awkward retreat. 

“Anyway, Hank, I’ve got to go, I promised Melissa to be home soon,” Chris finally said, and Hank nodded even as he inwardly flinched at the expected outcome, a dark voice that simply starting taking root in the hole Cole left whispering how awfully he just kept fucking up treating his friend like this. Chris for his part tried to remain cheery - pretending, whispered the voice - and simply grabbed Hank’s forearm in a friendly hold, seemingly unperturbed at having needed to help his colleague clean his kitchen and living room of old, disgusting food. “Look,” he started, some seriousness creeping into his voice, although his face remained open, “I can't pretend to even know what you're going through, but if you need anything, just give me a call. You… just tell me if you need something,” he settled on saying in the end, whatever encouraging words he was about to spew dying at the enormity of the situation they could not even begin to encompass. Hank appreciated and nodded firmly, although he felt like the offer was wasted on him to some extent. Nonetheless, even as he felt he didn't deserve it, that he was pathetic and yet so fragile at the same time, he appreciated the human connection even as he despised himself for it.

Chris only nodded in return giving him a wane smile before turning around to leave. When Hank spoke in return he didn't know why he did, how the words formed from his mouth with enough coherence to get out, overflowing and somewhat needy in their sincerity.

“Hey, do you ever see things?” Hank asked somewhat bluntly and vaguely, and at the startled look Chris shot his way he realised at the somewhat worrying ambiguity of his question. “Shit, I mean yeah that sounds crazy, but I don't mean see things as in a crazy sort of way of seeing things, or fuck is that rude? I mean, like sometimes seeing shit when you're looking at stuff and you get like this other sort of bullshit on top of it like… Okay, you know what this does sound crazy no matter how I put it, perhaps is just the drinking, I've had too much of that shit.” 

He was babbling. He was aware of that, and even more painfully aware of the clumsy rush of his words, their nonsensical stumbling at trying to find meaning in something that in fact seemed completely and utterly crazy, and therefore terrifying by default. Hank was just cringing, shame coursing somewhere deep inside him like a stinging burn, almost physically wanting to drag the words back inside just to make Chris not give him that look, that one look usually reserved, you guessed, for crazy people. Last thing he needed was people on his ass about seeing a doctor for that as well, in case his pitiful depression case wasn't the poster child for grieving. He was bracing for the reprimand or for the laugh, but somehow the moment passed, and Chris just watched him thoughtfully, in a way that made Hank feel deeply vulnerable and uncomfortable at the same time. 

“Have you heard of this soul learning theory bullshit they keep talking about on the news?” Chris finally asked, his voice open but controlled in a way that Hank was deeply familiar with from his working hours. The answer was so unexpected and peculiar, it brought forth an unprompted bark of somewhat condescending laugh out of him, both self conscious and derisive at the idea.

Chris for his part only gave an amused, wry smile before continuing. “Yeah, I know I expected as much response from you about it.”

“You can't be serious,” Hank dead panned back, his amusement dying down at what he seemed Chris was implying to him, incredulously trying to prod something out of the man that was proof the he was not implying what Hank thought he was.

“Listen,” Chris started, kindly amused but too serious for Hank to start feeling anything else but defensive, “I know your view on this shit. Everyone does,” he joked although Hank did not laugh again. It was true, he had not been subtle in expressing he thought it was a pile of neo-crap. “I feel the same. Mostly, anyway,” he added.

“Oh, common, you can't be seriously telling me you think I'm seeing, shit, I don't know… some kind of memories?!”

“I mean, no,” Chris backtracked somewhat defensively in front of Hank’s surprise. He only felt a tiny bit bad for that. “But, listen. I am not saying I buy into it. Mostly right now considering the whole android and Kamski hype it's definitely overblown. I am just saying… when I first met Melissa I felt something. Maybe even saw something, just a blinking grainy after image of familiarity to her smile and some of the ol’ Hallmark certainty that I would marry her,” he finished with a soft smile, obviously caught in the recollection. 

Hank huffed somewhat impatient. “So are you telling me you were a big sap?”

“I am telling you I had the momentary absolute certainty that we had met before and that something in me resonated with her. Besides my sappiness that I was seeing the most beautiful woman on earth,” he finished with a somewhat proud smirk, to which Hank only jokingly rolled his eyes. He had spent many days on shift with Chris at the office, everyone knew how whipped he was for his wife. 

“Was this supposed to help me?” 

“I don't know, man. All I know from this is that there might be something. Or there might be not. Anyway, I am hear to listen to it if you ever need it.” Hank simply jokingly dismissed his words, even as something coiled very uncomfortably and tightly in his chest at hearing them a heaviness that should not be there to something so ridiculously absurd. He dismissed him simply by telling him to fuck off to his wife, to which Chris just flipped the bird.

After Chris left, Hank intentionally did not think of his word, immediately chugging some alcohol as he was drowning. It was ridiculous that anything that was happening was memories -  _ fucking past life memories?? that was fucking insane, _ more so than his previous worries - and he simply dismissed the idea, burnt it away with every determined, punishing chug of alcohol until his thoughts unravelled into individual threads spinning towards oblivion. When darkness came over him, for the first time in a month the gun was forgotten in the drawer.

* * *

Unfortunately, as much Hank tried to dismiss the concept of past memories, and forget about any grainy images both came hauntingly back, until slowly something about these two associated started making sense too much for even his denial to overcome. 

That knowledge only made him fucking angrier at everything - at life? at existence? at God? - to the point that he could not stand to even hear about it. What a fucking joke. And androids on top of everything? Even more prominently disgusting and infuriating, Kamski’s words about perfection and souls snapping something inside him that he felt could not be repaired ever again. 

In the end, Hank was certain of two things:

One, androids, and their creator by extension, were an abomination, politically, socially, spiritually and anthropologically abhorrent, his hatred towards them so multifaceted that he could not even begin to dissect it. Not that he wanted to; they were guilty of existing, one of them personally having facilitated Cole’s death.

Secondly, the snippets of flashes haunted him, irregular and incomprehensible logically, beyond an unconscious, unwilling and unwelcome knowledge of what they meant and represented, and they could burn in hell for all that Hank cared. In the end, he knew what they all said, irrationally and illogically with an almost painful clarity. 

Hank lost Cole in every reiteration of life that he had ever had to endure before.


End file.
